This is the Baymaw Podcast with Marty Solman. I'm his co-host, Brent Billings. Today we head into the rest of Revelation and the apocalyptic vision that John is sharing with his persecuted audience, standing in the throne room and paying careful attention to what we see.

Indeed, we are going to continue using the same hermeneutic we have been using the entire time Brent, the entire time in Revelation, the entire time throughout the entire study of the scripture.

Why would we change it now? We are going to keep using the same hermeneutic of culture and text or what is the phrase we like to use Brent? Text in context.

We are going to keep using our hermeneutic of text to context. Before we read Revelation 4, it will be helpful to note the context surrounding the Roman priests who worked for and with the emperor himself.

Otherwise known as Caesar, Rome had 24 legal and official religions. Each of these religions, so Rome had 24, legal, what would we call them, state sanctioned religions.

Christianity not being one. Not even Judaism. Jewish exception, they could do their own thing, but they're not one of the 24.

Each of these religions had a head priest who served as their imperial representative, like an ambassador for Caesar.

These priests served in a very public and political office, often making their appearances at public proclamations, coronations, parusias, Olympic games, and other imperial events.

As history describes them, they were always seen wearing white robes and golden crowns. At times, they were described as having large golden sashes around their waist or their chest, and they would often lead the people in great chorus and song.

I've mentioned before that my belief is my stance for our study as that Revelation was written during or at least in reference to the reign of Domitian.

You may also recall the discussion about the largest gymnasium and there was a passing comment. The second largest gymnasium in the world was where Brent Trivia Ephesus, that's the largest.

That's the second largest. Second largest. There was a synagogue in it.

Oh, Sardis. Sardis. Second largest gymnasium in the empire.

And yet here in Ephesus, we'll have the largest gymnasium in the ancient Roman world. And it was under construction in Ephesus, somewhere around the riding of Revelation.

You could go to these ruins today and you will find dominant images around the structure, as well as other cities in Biblical Asia.

You're going to find lots of images that are just consistent throughout Roman Empire in the first century.

Just outside the gymnasium sits a gate. In fact, I'm going to show you a picture of that right now. There's this gate that sits right outside the gymnasium of Ephesus.

And on it are these decorations, these wreaths and these ox heads about every 10 feet or so. There are these heads of oxen.

And they just kind of sit on that gate decorating it. Each emperor had a different animal that they would choose to represent themselves.

So if you look at your next picture, there today we have a picture of a statue kind of representing Caesar. It actually came right out of the temple to Caesar there in Pergamum that we talked about.

When we talked about Pergamum, there is a statue of Caesar there. Now we have our next photo kind of zooms in on that statue.

And as you can see on the zoomed-in photo, you'll notice a bunch of images there. Lions and eagles, very probably griffins, but you get the idea.

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